Armchair Generalist

Anniston Depot's Final Shipments

The US Army Chemical Materials Agency announced that the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility is prepared to start its last campaign - destroying its cache of mustard agent and associated munitions.

Anniston Chemical Activity (ANCA) employees safely moved the first containers with 4.2-inch mustard-filled munitions Monday, June 29. Large, sealed metal containers, called Enhanced Onsite Containers, are
used to move chemical munitions from storage igloos to the ANCDF to ensure the safety of the work force and environment.

Conrad F. Whyne, CMA director, said, "We reviewed the efforts the Anniston team accomplished prior to their beginning operations. And we also reviewed the pre-operational reviews. We have concluded ANCA and ANCDF employees are ready and prepared to resume safe demilitarization operations."

ANCA Commander Lt. Col. Andrew M. Herbst said, "The ANCA Team is dedicated, skilled, and well trained. The team is eager to get back to the business of safely moving mustard munitions.  Like the successful nerve agent campaign, the ANCA Team is well prepared to step up and support the final ANCDF disposal campaign."

The Army's incineration sites are on track to complete their operations by 2012. That'll leave the two sites looking for neutralization at Colorado and Kentucky hanging in the wind for another decade.

Educating the Military "Experts"

The Washington Post wants to get excited about the North Korean government's launching of a few Scud-type ballistic missiles on Independence Day. Because North Korea was able to launch a few bottle rockets that might range 350 miles on a good day, we're supposed to be terrified.

The seven rockets splashed harmlessly into the sea, and U.S. analysts said all appeared to be short-range ballistic missiles capable of striking targets less than 350 miles away. Some independent experts said the firing of multiple missiles may have been intended as a warning to adversaries that North Korea would seek to overwhelm their missile shields.

"The chief challenge with missile defense is coping with large numbers of missiles, and the firing of seven has a saturation quality to it," said Dennis M. Gormley, a former member of numerous military and intelligence advisory boards and a senior fellow at the Monterey Institute's James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington. "It at least raises the specter of these kinds of attacks."
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Military officials in both countries told reporters that the North Korean missiles appeared to variants of the Scud, a Soviet-era weapon with a range of about 300 miles.

Government officials quoted in Japanese and South Korean news accounts said the missiles may have been Nodongs, a modified, longer-range Scud. North Korea has more than 200 of these missiles, which are capable of striking nearly all of Japan. The Japanese government considers them a serious threat, and it spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years buying two U.S.-made antimissile defense systems.

The fact that North Korea can threaten Japan with a few hundred old Scud-type missiles doesn't mean it's an existential threat to the United States. Having theater ballistic missiles means nothing compared to its ability to field intercontinental ballistic missiles that can range the United States.  if someone wants to suggest that North Korea's plan to attack the United States involves "saturating" our missile defense system, I'd point out that we successfully managed the former Soviet Union's missile threat - which I think was a little more significant - for quite a few decades. So can we calm down now?

North Korea wants global attention fixated on them. We ought to have recognized this game by now. Let's not make this into the justification for a $10 billion annual missile defense program.

EMP Crazies Still Out There

George Smith digs out the EMP crazies for your amusement. Amusingly, even though North Korea has been largely unable to create even a functional nuclear weapon capability, someone has convinced South Korea that it needs EMP defenses.

If something is backed up by hard science and poses a real danger for everyone on the planet, the Republican party denies its existence. If, however, the threat is something rather abstract to almost all Americans, rests almost entirely on theoretical prediction, is something not likely to ever occur at all, and then only in the context of what would promise to be an all out nuclear war, the GOP believes in it very strongly.

And of course, this explains why Faux News Channel (see the collection of vids at the end of the post) is the only one that covers this issue.

Burma's Nuke Program?

I've been meaning to comment on the US government's tracking the North Korean ship that was trudging its way toward Burma (not Myanmar - that's an illegitimate name that the military leaders gave it). The suspicion is that there might be nuclear technologies and missile systems on board.

North Korea has used Myanmar ports and airstrips to transfer arms and contraband to third countries, including Iran, these officials said. Myanmar's military government also has purchased on the open market technologies that are potentially usable in a nuclear program, and North Korean arms companies involved in the nuclear trade have become active in Myanmar, said U.S., Asian and United Nations officials.
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Several Myanmar citizens, some of them expatriates, have claimed direct knowledge of a nuclear-weapons program, including a reactor under construction near Maymyo, according to Myanmar experts. But the remote area is off-limits to outsiders without government permission and the reports haven't been independently confirmed.

My first reaction was, come on, Burma? Developing a nuclear weapons program? Pull the other leg. I do see a lot of hits on the topic, but honestly, the country has so many other problems, there's no way they could pull it off. I'd rather suspect that Burma is just a stop-over for North Korean cargo that's going to the Middle East. In any event, I didn't think that the US government had any rationale to stop the ship, since it was under an nK flag and going to a Burma port. But who knows where the hell it's going now?

Amitai Etzioni, a former senior advisor to the Carter administration, asks whether progressives have the nerve to admit that we can, in fact, address proliferation without using force. He's right - we ought to be able to say, yes, there is a multilateral approach to nonproliferation that works, and in this case, the US govt did the right thing by not forcing the issue. 

Conservative Hawks Fail on Nukes

I think it's great how the Wall Street Journal is always willing to entertain the passionate mutterings of neocons and conservatives when they feel like telling us what we ought to be doing in defense. It's really too easy to mock them. Here's Richard "what failed Iraq strategy" Perle and his buddy Sen. Jon "where's my majority" Kyl.

In the nuclear-free world that ended in 1945 there was neither peace nor security. Since then there have indeed been many wars but none has come close to the carnage that occurred regularly before the development of nuclear weapons, and none has pitted nuclear powers against each other.

So what we need are more nations with nuclear weapons. Then no one will fight each other, right?

Thus, in his Prague speech, Mr. Obama announced that the U.S. would "immediately and aggressively" pursue ratification of the comprehensive ban on the testing of nuclear weapons. The administration believes, without evidence, that ratification of the test-ban treaty will discourage other countries from developing nuclear weapons.

That's not true at all. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is supposed to convince other nations that they don't need the bomb. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is supposed to just make the United States honest about popping the occasional nuke as a test along with the other signatories.

For the foreseeable future, the U.S. and many of our allies rely on our nuclear deterrent. And as long as the U.S. possesses nuclear weapons, they must be -- as Mr. Obama recognized in Prague -- "safe, secure and effective." Yet his proposed 2010 budget fails to take the necessary steps to do that.

Actually, that's not true, the budget does put down quite a few billion for the nuclear weapons stockpile. It doesn't fund the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, for which people use the code words "safe, secure, and effective." Be nice if there were any nuclear weapons experts who could articulate something other than "we need more nukes."

If we were to approach zero nuclear weapons today, others would almost certainly try even harder to catapult to superpower status by acquiring a bomb or two. A robust American nuclear force is an essential discouragement to nuclear proliferators; a weak or uncertain force just the opposite.

And of course, no one, especially President Obama, is suggesting either a unilateral disarmament or doing it today. But what the hell, it's not as if Kyl and Perle haven't lied out their asses in attempts to badmouth progressive defense experts. Why should they start being honest now?

Britain's Secret CW History

From the dusty drawers of history comes this story about chemical warfare research during World War II. There were no holds barred in the hunt for offensive measures to keep the Germans off of British soil. So here's one attempt:

Research scientists thought clouds of poison darts, blasted from canisters high above the battlefield, could be even more lethal against enemy troop concentrations than high-explosive shells.

Mustard gas compounds in the needles would ensure anyone whose skin was broken would die a swift and horrible death, or at least have terrible injuries.

Assessing the effectiveness of the darts one report notes: "If penetrating into the flesh, will cause death if not plucked out within 30 seconds.

"If plucked out within this time, will cause disablement by collapse.

"Collapse occurs within one to five minutes, and death within 30 minutes."

A hand-written comment written next to this observed: "I doubt whether the darts can be plucked out. The paper tail would come off."

I have heard of research that attempted to make poisoned flechettes for artillery rounds or aerial bombs, but the logic fails when the operational commander says "So if I can hit them with arty or bombs, why not use high explosive instead? So much easier and less complicated." I am not sure that mustard agent would have been the preferred agent - the Allies didn't have nerve agent, but mustard agent was around. I just don't know if a small dose of subdural injected mustard would be so quickly lethal. But then again, I'm not up on medical effects.

Hat tip to Ray!

Saddam Didn't Have the WMDs

This isn't news, but you have to wonder why it took a FOIA request to get it out of the federal government.

The FBI interrogations of the toppled tyrant - codename "Desert Spider" - were declassified after a Freedom of Information Act request.

The records show Saddam happily boasted of duping the world about stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. And he consistently denied cooperating with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda.

Of all his enemies, Iraq's ex-president - who insisted he still held office during captivity - hated Iran most.

Asked how he would have faced "fanatic" Iranian ayatollahs if Iraq had been proven toothless by UN weapons inspectors in 2003, Saddam said he would have cut a deal with Bush.

"Hussein replied Iraq would have been extremely vulnerable to attack from Iran and would have sought a security agreement with the U.S. to protect it from threats in the region," according to a 2004 FBI report among the declassified files.

Saddam Hussein was a lot of things, but he wasn't stupid. Unfortunately, our administration was.

Chem Demil Update

Here's a tale of two cities, Hermiston, Oregon, and Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It's the worst of times for Hermiston - a judge denied the local environmental activists their bid to stop the Army from incinerating mustard agent.

The petitioners feel that the burning of mustard agent is harmful to the environment and the people who live near the depot, where the chemical agent disposal facility is located. The unknown levels of mercury in the mustard when burned and released into the atmosphere is risky, GAP said.

"We're asking the court to stop the burning, which we believe poses a serious health threat to citizens of Oregon and Washington state," GAP Senior Counsel Richard Condit said.

According to GAP, unlike the chemical disposal plants with this type of mustard agent, the quantities of hazardous wastes in the ton containers stored at the depot - 63 percent by weight of all stockpiled munitions - have never been determined because "the EQC (Environmental Quality Commission) and Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) have refused to require testing of each of the ton containers."

DEQ is requiring the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility to sample 120 ton containers, said Bob Dikeman, project general manager for Washington Defense Group, the contractor for the facility.

It's a bitch when you find out that the Army is actually doing everything safe and legal and there's nothing your Luddite ideology can do to stop it. I weep for the poor GAPpers. Meanwhile, in Pine Bluff, it's the best of times. In fact, the local community, who actually LIKES the Army, supports speeding up the disposal process.

Stu Soffer, a member of the arsenal’s Citizens Advisory Commission, commented on “the high level of confidence we have” in those involved in the burn. They include ADEQ, the U.S. Army and the contractor hired for disposal, Washington Defense Group, EG&G Division of URS Corp.

“We’ve got the highest regard for their ability,” he said, adding, “I believe the community also has the same high degree of confidence. I think that confidence is evident here tonight.”

Soffer predicted at last month’s commission meeting that “there’s not going to be anybody at White Hall City Hall for the public hearing.”

Several commissioners commented on how the facility here had not received the kind of public opposition as other disposal sites have.

Same agent, same incineration process at both facilities. It's a funny world, but fortunately the Army is cruising along with its chemical demilitarization program - except for the ACWA project that is inching forward in Kentucky and Colorado. But that's on Mitch McConnell.

Responding to Chem Bio Weapons

I continue to be amazed by Scott Sagan's discussions on nuclear weapons strategy. In this 2000 International Security article, he makes the case that the US government should not have a philosophy of responding to chemical or biological weapons attacks with nuclear weapons, unless the CB weapons attack was extraordinarily large.

The greatest danger created by U.S. nuclear threats is that they provide an incentive to respond with nuclear weapons, for the sake of maintaining the reputation for honoring one’s commitments, to attacks that otherwise would be responded to with conventional retaliation only. The problem here is one of degree: it is unlikely that any U.S. president would respond with nuclear weapons to a very small-scale chemical or biological weapons attack; yet a president’s belief that his or her statements, or those of subordinate officials, had created a commitment in the eyes of allies and future adversaries could tip the balance between nuclear and conventional response in more serious contingencies. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a more important or valid reason for using nuclear weapons in response to chemical or biological weapons attacks. Yet, because this strategic rationale for U.S. nuclear use is largely self-constructed, its strategic benefits must be measured against its strategic costs.
 
Defense analysts who focus exclusively on battlefield effects of U.S. nuclear weapons use miss the point. The direct military effects of any U.S. nuclear response to a chemical or biological attack will depend to a large degree on the scope and target of the U.S. nuclear strike; U.S. nuclear retaliation could be large or small and could be aimed against an adversary’s capital city, an air base, chemical or biological weapons production plants, conventional military forces in the field, or other valued targets. The broader strategic consequences of any U.S. decision to use nuclear weapons, however, are likely to be independent of the number of nuclear weapons detonated, the kind of nuclear weapon(s) used, the targets destroyed, or even the context in which nuclear weapons were used. The first use of any nuclear weapon in combat since World War II would be a norm-shattering event throughout the world, and the twin facts that a nuclear weapon was used and that it was the United States that used it would surely be highly salient to most observers. Although there is relatively little evidence that can be used to predict how other governments would react—for the fortunate reason that the United States has not detonated nuclear weapons in conflict since August 1945—the evidence that does exist concerning the views of leaders in potential proliferators about U.S. nuclear weapons use against biological threats suggests that many would push for their own nuclear weapons. One likely victim of such a U.S. nuclear strike would therefore be the global nuclear nonproliferation regime. The many modern industrial states that have the capability to build nuclear weapons, but have thus far chosen not to, would have to reevaluate that position in the harsh light of U.S. nuclear weapons use.

You have to read this article. This guy makes a great case here - it would be nice to think that our Very Serious People inside the Beltway might listen to him. I've got to meet Sagan sometime, he seems like a fascinating person. Hat tip to Matt!

Iran's Nuke - It Will Be All Right

Stephen Walt ruminates about  the possibility that if Moussavi does become Iran's next president, he may very well continue Iran's ambition for nuclear weapons. This is not an original thought, but I liked Walt's logic in viewing the whole situation.

The good news is that the history of the nuclear age demonstrates that nuclear weapons do not enable their possessors to conquer or threaten others with impunity, and thus don't provide much in the way of an offensive or coercive capability. Having tens of thousands of nukes didn't permit the United States or Soviet Union to blackmail other countries during the Cold War, having a handful of nukes hasn't enabled Kim Jong Il to dictate to anybody, and having a sizeable nuclear arsenal doesn't allow Israel to tell Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, or its various other adversaries what to do.  

In fact, nuclear weapons are good for only one or two things: 1) protecting your own territory (and maybe the territory of especially close allies) against conquest and occupation, and 2) making it hard for others to coerce you. As IAEA head Mohammed El-Baradei said of Iran yesterday, "They want to send a message to their neighbors, to the rest of the world, 'Don't mess with us,'" adding that "it is also an insurance policy against what they have heard in the past about regime change."

I've heard some experts on the Middle East confess in non-attributional settings that it isn't Iran's nuke weapons that they fear; rather, that Iran will become more emboldened in its support to terrorist groups. If Iran chooses to go that way, we can counter that easier than rattling nuclear sabers.

End the "Strategic Ambiguity" Policy

Via the ArmsControlWonk, Scott Sagan explains why continuing the policy of "strategic ambiguity" in the development of nuclear strategy is just counterproductive and needs to be changed.

The point is not that potential veiled US nuclear threats were in any way the cause of Iran’s nuclear-weapons programme, which began long before the Bush administration took office. But US nuclear threats, intentional or not, both play into the hands of domestic forces in Iran that favour developing nuclear weapons and reduce international diplomatic support for coercive diplomatic efforts to pressure Iran to end its defiance of UN Security Council resolutions requiring suspension of its enrichment programme. If the United States were to adopt a no-first-use doctrine, the temptation for US politicians to resort to veiled nuclear threats as part of coercive diplomacy against Iran or other potential proliferators would be reduced, as would the ability of Tehran to claim it faces nuclear threats.

I hadn't thought of it this way, but it confirms my opinion that this policy is a Cold War dinosaur that needs to be extinct. 

CB Defense: Going to the Dogs

My colleagues at the Danger Room found a grant by the DOD CB Defense Program's Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program awarded to a research company that wants to put chemical agent detectors on insects. This isn't an entirely new idea - DARPA's been buzzing about that idea for years (sorry, bad pun).  I'm more put off about another funded contract in the SBIR program - awards to companies that want to build collective protection shelters for military working dogs.

Agave BioSystems: Shelter enclosures for military working dogs in the event of a CB attack is a technology gap identified by the Joint Requirements Office. Important parameters to consider in the design of protective enclosures include low weight and size to minimize transport requirements; rapid setup; and accommodation of canine physiological and psychological comfort needs. The overall operational weight of the enclosure would also be a function of its power requirements which in turn is a function of its operating mode. Therefore, Agave BioSystems, in collaboration with Gentex Corporation and Dr. Joseph Wakshlag of the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine, proposes to design and develop protective enclosures for military working dogs that meet these parameters. In the Phase I, this team will define the canine physiological and psychological parameters of importance to enclosure design; develop multiple designs to allow consideration for both powered and non-powered enclosures as well as active and passive materials; and demonstrate proof of concept for the protective capacity and long-term kenneling suitability of the designs.

Technical Products Inc: Doctrine for employment of canines in a CBRN environment has evolved into a Collective Protection approach. Providing COLPRO has several very significant implications for Canine kennels and shelters: The outer surface of the structure must be CB agent impervious; The outer surface of the structure must resist effects of the decontamination process; The system must provide the animal a supply of filtered air and provide for the discharge of exhaled air; The system must manage the thermal environment and additional loading generated by the encapsulated canine Because of the potential for an extended dwell time within the COLPRO structure we have to add another set of requirements to the system; management of the hotel functions; atmospheric humidity within the structure; the animal's bodily waste; noise from air supply and thermal management devices, etc.; light levels within and visibility from outside the structure; access to the animal by the handler. We must also apply the limitations of low/no power requirements, low bulk for shipping, and having a system which has broad or ideally universal applicability, not just as a COLPRO device. Development of such a shelter is the subject of this proposal.

Now the Joint Requirements Office, within the DOD CB Defense Program, did actually identify "capability gaps" in individual and collective protection, in addition to medical countermeasures, for "military working animals" - that they require protection from the effects of CB warfare agents just like all military personnel operating in combat zones. I also told certain individuals at the time of the assessment that this was one of the most ridiculous issue that I've ever heard in my career. Well, okay, maybe chemical detectors on insects is a little more ridiculous. But honestly - if you don't want your military working dogs to be affected by CBW agents, here's a tip - DON'T BRING THEM INTO CONTAMINATED AREAS.

Really, it's that simple. People go into contaminated areas because the military mission compels them to accept that risk. There's really no reason to have dogs in that environment(because they can't really "work" in contaminated zones. It's not the Cold War - we don't have threats of large area attacks as we once did. In addition, it's not like there are that many military working dogs in theater (compared to the military personnel numbers). And here's the real kicker - ideally, you'd think that the dogs could share the collective protection shelters that their human masters would be using. But the US military doesn't really believe in collective protection shelters, outside of a few medical field hospitals and certain Navy amphibious ships. They're too bulky, too hard to set up, and not integrated into standard shelters and buildings that the military uses today. But yes, absolutely, let's waste a few million dollars on researching the possibility of developing collective protection for Fido and Mitsy.

Educating the Media

There must be some rule in journalism that says when you're writing an obituary, you don't have to fact-check. That's the only explanation I can think of in reference to the New York Times' coverage of the passing of Dr. D.A. Osguthorpe.  

It was 1968, military testing in the deserts of the West was in full cold war fever, and more than 6,000 sheep had been found dead in a remote valley in western Utah.

The United States Army, which had a chemical warfare facility not far from Skull Valley, where the sheep had died, denied responsibility. But Dr. Delbert A. Osguthorpe, a prominent large-animal veterinarian who had been appointed by Gov. Calvin L. Rampton to head the state’s investigation, knew that his diagnosis was correct and insisted right back. The sheep, he concluded, were killed by nerve gas.

Utah’s Congressional delegation pressed for hearings in Washington, and eventually the truth came out: valves on a plane carrying nerve agents had failed, and the gas had fallen as precipitation on the sheep herd.

The ranchers' herds (plural, not singular) were 30 miles from Dugway Proving Ground's test site, behind a 1000-foot mountain range. I've talked about the physics of this challenge before. Most of the sheep were ill for weeks, and attempts to duplicate VX effects on sheep failed to match the Skull Valley sheep symptoms. Another minor point, there was no nerve agent found on the pelts, the theory was that the sheep ate contaminated grass or alfalfa - the nerve agent didn't "precipitate" on the sheep herds. The Dugway investigative team counted about 3800 dead sheep, many killed by ranchers with guns. The Army reimbursed the uninsured ranchers for 4372 dead sheep and 1877 "disabled" sheep ("exposed" sheep that were not ill) at twice the market rate. That's not more than 6000 sheep killed by nerve agent, that's more than 6000 dead and disabled sheep killed by ranchers. I think there's a distinction. 

More importantly, the obit failed to note that Osguthorpe was a rancher in Skull Valley with his own sheep herd, although he didn't claim any of his sheep died from nerve agent exposure. I don't think you can call Osguthorpe an objective witness, with his buddies up the valley whining about their misfortune. As for the governor, he was convinced within a week after the incident - as the investigation was ongoing - that the Army was guilty of gassing the sheep, and he was determined to get the Army to reimburse the uninsured ranchers. He also announced his running for a second term of office a month after the incident. It didn't matter what the investigation revealed, he "knew" that the Army was guilty and that was that. 

But hey, being a major national paper, continued sloppy journalism, the need to be nice to a dead guy, I guess that's the norm these days. 

It's All in the Words

The NY Times talks about the whole crazy issue of talking about pandemic influenza issues. Who really knows what they mean by "pandemic?"

“There is a lot of misinformation in the medical literature, and it is really quite hard to figure out what is and what is not a pandemic,” said Dr. David M. Morens, an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has been studying the history of pandemics.

The word implies the rapid spread of an infectious disease to many countries in different regions, hitting each with more or less the same severity. But in fact, severity varies — not all people are infected at the same time, and not every country need be affected.

And there can be many other factors, including the numbers and percentages of people falling ill and dying; a population’s vulnerability to the disease, based on previous rates of infection; and the quality of health care facilities and disease monitoring systems.

Not least is that scientists do not know precisely how pandemics arise, what fuels them, why they vary in their lethality, why some occur in waves and why they stop.

It's an interesting article, reminds me of all the debates about deciding what a "weapon of mass destruction" is - only nukes? nuclear, biological and chemical weapons? just nukes and some bio agents? all CBRN hazards? toxic industrial chemicals? big jumbo airplanes? high-yield explosives? cherry bombs and a gallon of gasoline? People make it too hard to discuss serious topics. It's as if they change the definition to fit their argument. A common lexicon is a good thing to have when discussing serious public policy issues.

Strategic Ambiguity Isn't All That

Our SecState Hillary Clinton tells us that "there would be retaliation" if Iran attacks Israel with a nuclear weapon, but she won't say exactly how. Does anyone question that the US government would at least prepare nuclear weapons for use against Iran if Israel's nukes didn't destroy Tehran and several other cities first?

Clinton was asked whether her statement as a presidential candidate that Iran would “incur massive retaliation” for attacking Israel is now official U.S. policy. “I think it is U.S. policy to the extent that we have alliances and understandings with a number of nations,” Clinton said. “I think there would be retaliation.”

Clinton said the U.S. needs to make clear to Iran that pursuing nuclear weapons will undermine peace and security for Iran and the entire region. With Arab states and Israel anxious about Iran’s intentions, there’s danger of “a Middle East arms race which leads to nuclear weapons being in the possession of other countries,” she said.

Asked whether she was skeptical that President Barack Obama’s policy of engagement can succeed in forestalling Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Clinton replied, “Well, I am someone who is going to wait and see.”

While dialogue would give both sides better information about one another, the U.S. has “to be willing to sit and listen and evaluate without giving up what we view as a primary objective of the engagement, which is to do everything we can to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state.”

I hate this game the politicians play - "we will retaliate and it will be massive," but we're not going to tell you if it's coming by cruise missile with a nuclear or conventional warhead. For some reason that I don't fathom, this "strategic ambiguity" is supposed to be the preferred diplomatic response. I suppose "civilized" nations aren't supposed to openly discuss the potential of nuclear warfare, except behind closed doors. It might offend the senses.

So, what happens if Israel attacks Iran with nuclear weapons in a preventive strike against Iran's hardened "nuclear energy" infrastructure? Would our response still be "massive?"

D-Day Memories

The Boston Herald discusses this story about a Chemical Warfare Service soldier who passed himself off as an 82nd Airborne Division soldier during the invasion of France in 1944. It's a strange one.

An Army veteran who has masqueraded as a D-Day paratrooper for decades is due to receive France’s highest military award, although records reveal the 84-year-old Lowell native didn’t jump into Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Howard Manoian’s gripping accounts of landing behind enemy lines with the elite 82nd Airborne Division have been widely reported by the Herald, The Boston Globe and other newspapers.

National Archives records provided to the Herald by military researchers show Manoian does in fact deserve recognition as one of the many thousands of young American soldiers who put their lives on the line on D-Day - not as a paratrooper, but as a member of a less glamorous chemical warfare unit that came ashore on Utah Beach and ran a supply dump.

“The military records leave no doubt that he never served in Normandy as a paratrooper,” said researcher Brian Siddall of Ithaca, N.Y., citing numerous reports and payroll records listing Manoian in the 33rd Chemical Decontamination Company throughout 1944.

People probably forget that the expectation on D-Day was that German forces would use chemical warfare agents - mustard at least - to fend off the Allied invasion. After all, Winston Churchill was very prepared to do the same if Operation Sea Lion had taken place (not to mention our fears in 1990 and 2003 that Saddam Hussein would do the same). As for Manoian's indiscretion, well, I can't testify as to the selectivity of the Chemical Warfare Service in the 1940s. 

I did a quick search on Manoian - seems that he moved to Chef-du-Pont near St. Mere Englise quite a few years ago, and thejournalists just can't seem to stay away from the story-teller. As I said, quite a story.

Like A Virgin

In a typical theatrical and overblown manner, Graham Allison warns us that Iran is no longer a "virgin" when it comes to nuclear weapons programs. Does that mean that she's a "cool chick" now?

The Iranian nuclear challenge was transformed on President George W. Bush's watch. Events in Iran have advanced faster than the policy community's thinking about the problem. The brute fact is that Iran has crossed a threshold that is painful to acknowledge but impossible to ignore: It has lost its nuclear virginity.

Over the past eight years, the United States has insisted that Iran would never be allowed to develop the capability to enrich uranium, as that could be used to build a nuclear bomb. Three unanimous U.N. Security Council resolutions demanded that Iran "suspend all enrichment-related activities." That was a worthy aim. Technically, mastery of enrichment is the brightest red line short of nuclear weapons. Israelis have called it the "point of no return."
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The central policy question becomes: What combination of arrangements, inside and outside Iran, has the best chance of persuading it to stop short of a nuclear bomb? More important than how many centrifuges Iran continues operating at Natanz is how transparent it will be about all of its nuclear activities, including the manufacture of centrifuges. Maximizing the likelihood that covert enrichment will be discovered is the best way to minimize the likelihood that it will be pursued. The best hope for defining a meaningful red line is to enshrine the Iranian supreme leader's affirmations that Iran will never acquire nuclear weapons in a solemn international agreement that commits Russia and China to join the United States in specific, devastating penalties for violation of that pledge.

The Obama administration cannot restore Iran's nuclear innocence. Its challenge is to prevent the birth of the next nuclear-weapons state.

Of course I'm going to disagree with Allison's overblown commentary on a few accounts. First of all, when I was dating Iran, she said she'd already been with other boys and knew her way around the whole "sex" thing. I'm not so sure, based on her inexperience last time we were in the back seat. That North Korea skank is clearly no lady - she's put out, and she's boasting about it - but I am pretty sure that Iran is still a virgin, since she clearly has not been "penetrated" by any actual nuclear weapon testing or use.

Second, Allison and other nonproliferation advocates continue to wet their pants over Iran's nuclear weapons program as if this were the most serious threat in the world. It's not. We've known the answer to Iran for some time. It isn't to threaten preventive military strikes against Iran - as even Allison notes, that's not going to stop the program, although it may disrupt it temporarily. Probably piss the Iranians off and make them redouble their efforts. The key to nonproliferation actions lies in whether we can convince Russia and China that lucrative economic ties with Iran ought to be abandoned until that government promises on a stack of Korans that it will stop trying to build a nuclear weapon. I don't think that approach is going to be successful, if merely because Russia and China don't see the nuclear threat to be as dangerous as the need to build their economies in this current climate.

Military actions are always an option, but at the right time and place. The first thing we ought to do is stop saying "Iran cannot be allowed to continue its pursuit of nuclear weapons and that means shutting down all of its enrichment facilities." We can't dictate to a sovereign government as if it were a child (and that goes doubly for North Korea); it's arrogant and counterproductive. We need to state our desire to support Iran's nuclear energy program while continuing to dissuade it from building nuclear weapons. If that fails, then we station an aircraft carrier off its shore and remind Iran that failed deterrence means they could get severely nuked.  Of course, a more effective foreign policy strategy at stabilizing the Middle East - something Allison forgot to mention as the Bush administration's greatest failure in this regard - would be a good thing, too.

UPDATE: Cheryl at WhirledView also mocks the Very Serious Person.

Facing North Korea Down

Dick Morris was on Faux News Channel last week promoting the idea that Japan needs to build its own nuclear weapons to deter North Korea. He is, of course, certifiably off his rocker.

The irony, of course, is that North Korea is probably the single state in the world most vulnerable to international sanctions. It produces no energy of its own. If China chose to bring the country to its knees, it could do so in a heartbeat. But will they?
China is worried about triggering a flood of North Korean refugees across its borders and tends to be protective of its erstwhile ally.
But the real pressure point on China is Japan. If the Japanese signal that they will respond to the North Korean nuclear test with a decision to change its constitution and develop nuclear weapons itself, the impact on both China and North Korea will be intense.

One of the main points of the Nonproliferation Treaty is that the US government provides security assurances to Japan so that it doesn't build a nuclear weapon. But beyond that point, why in the world would a nation who had been scarred by nuclear weapons and made it a point of national pride to promote nuclear nonproliferation even think of such an option? Of course, it wouldn't. And for Morris (and Charles Krauthammer) to even suggest this in public is ludicrous.

Of course, as right wing pundits railing against President Obama's nuclear strategy in his first year go, Morris could actually be mistaken as the sane one.

Apologies to SOCOM

I have to reach out and apologize to the SOCOM community for my earlier post. Upon closer examination of the first photo and this one (at the Army Times site), in particular their captions, I realized that the guy in the tan JSLIST suit is the SOCOM operator and the two guys in woodland camo are Korean special forces. The K2 assault rifles should have been my first clue.

The SOCOM operator has green vinyl overboots and rubber gloves, all legit chemical protective gear. He's wearing the standard JSLIST suit, not wearing the special SOCOM JSLIST suit, without the parka. They wanted a little more freedom in their head movement, but maybe they're saving those for the real deal. But you see the gap between the parka and the mask where the parka has "puckered" open? I never liked the idea of getting rid of the hoods and relying on tightening the parka around the M40 mask's rim. Just not secure enough for me, but the Marine Corps didn't ask me when they were the program managers for the JSLIST.

But the Koreans... wow. The guy in the center is wearing "fishtail" protective boots, which the US Army declared obsolete at least a decade ago. They are incredibly hard to wear and run across rough terrain. Based on the mixed top and bottom of the Korean operators, I'm not sure they are using protective suits at all - may be just standard combat uniform, definitely leather gloves though. The ROK is much closer to real chemical warfare agents than you or I will ever be, and I just expected a higher standard from them. Ah well.

Russian Chem Demil

With some fanfare, the long-awaited opening of the Russian chemical disposal facility at Shchuchye is finally taking place - after a $1 billion US investment into its building. It's taken way too long (talks were initiated in 1996), confounded by Russian bureaucracy, anti-incineration foes, US congressional foot-dragging, and yes, even the Russian mafia, but here it is.

The new facility, built with $1 billion in American aid, represents a milestone in a longstanding partnership between the United States and Russia to safeguard and in many cases liquidate enormous quantities of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons manufactured by the Soviet Union.
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The shells and warheads at Shchuchye contain about 5,950 tons of nerve agents, including sarin and VX. To dispose of them, a hole will be drilled into each, and the agents will be drained and mixed with other chemicals to neutralize them. The residue will be solidified in asphalt or a similar material.

While the facility’s formal opening is on Friday, it began preliminary operations in March. Russia ended up allocating roughly $600 million for the project, and other countries contributed as well.

It has taken years to develop the process to eliminate the nerve agents, with the Russians choosing not to incinerate them because of local opposition. It might be five years or more before all the weapons are neutralized.

“It turns out that it is a lot easier to produce chemical weapons than to destroy them,” said Igor V. Rybalchenko, a scientist who is a senior adviser to the Russian government.
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Shchuchye, in fact, has only 14 percent of Russia’s chemical weapons, which are kept at seven sites.But Shchuchye is considered perhaps the most critical location because many of the nerve agents are in shells. The city is close to Kazakhstan, which itself is near Afghanistan.

If you ignore the inflated hype in the article about the "deadliness" of one chemical artillery round, this isn't a bad article. I'd like to tell Igor there that he's full of crap - it's very easy to destroy chemical weapons, and incineration works fine. If you want to generate millions of gallons of liquid waste instead of much less solid waste, hey, it's your country. Russia does have six other chemical weapons disposal sites already running, but off the top of my head, I don't know if they are incineration-based or neutralization sites. It's not as if they have a nice web site with all the information as the US Army does here. But no, they're not going to make the 2012 deadline either.